The PhD program is designed to admit relatively small numbers each year, which afford students the opportunity to forge close working relationship with the faculty. All PhD students are admitted with a five-year year-round funding package which includes a stipend, tuition remission, and health insurance (see: Financial Aid and Awards). Our faculty and graduate students work together in a number of interdisciplinary research projects, programs, and centers, including the Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute, the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict, Kitty and Michael Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy, the Institute for Urban Health Research, Northeastern Environmental Justice Research Collaborative, the Institute on Race and Justice, the Network Science Institute, NULab for Texts, Maps and Networks, and the Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program. Many of the faculty in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology have additional interests and are affiliated with other departments on campus, including environmental studies, law, policy, and society, Latino, Latin American and Caribbean studies, African American studies, international affairs, Jewish studies, and criminal justice. Students who wish to work with faculty in other disciplines are encouraged to enlist the aid of the sociology graduate director or their advisers in contacting individual faculty members.
Embedded in interdisciplinary networks and committed to experiential knowledge, the Sociology department is well-positioned to help solve the world's most pressing problemsfrom health disparities, to the impacts of climate change, to the inclusion, recognition, and dignity of persons marginalized by race, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexuality, to growing wealth disparities and labor exploitation, to the full inclusion of refugees and migrants.
Through a rigorous curriculum, our students experience methodological, theoretical, and substantive training aimed at enhancing critical thinking, social awareness, and a globally-oriented conception of inequality and justice.
